Example Nursing Personal Statement
To become a nurse was my first ambition and the subject of my studies immediately after I matriculated from school. Personal and financial issues forced me to abandon my training before the end of the first year, and I finally graduated from UCT with an MBA, but my real and long-standing interest in healthcare and my concern for patient welfare quickly led me into the area of NHS management, resulting in the establishment of my own company, Ledge Consulting Ltd, through which I have worked as an advisor to various hospital trusts and PCTs. I am proud of my achievements in this field; my record shows how effective I have been in saving money for these bodies through improved efficiency. As a result I feel that I am particularly well informed about the relationship between management and clinician, with a very realistic sense of the ways that commercial considerations can have an impact on the quality of care that is delivered to patients. Some of my thoughts have been set down in a paper I recently co-authored with Prof. Paul Corrigan, “The Hospital is Dead. Long Live the Hospital”, published by the policy think tank Reform, which received extensive media coverage, both here and abroad. In all of these considerations my principal aim has been to improve the lot of patients, and I feel now that the real fulfilment of my concerns must be in direct care of those who are in need. I am very much aware that my approach to nursing has been curiously indirect, and that I am applying as a mature candidate, but I also feel that this, for me, is the route to personal as well as professional fulfilment.
Among my accomplishments as a manager in healthcare are many financial improvements through eliminating waste and streamlining performance. At the NHS SW Essex PCT Clusters, where I have been working most recently, I delivered £42m savings in 6 months through adjusting contracts and refining approaches in 11 different work-streams. I also developed a high-level contestability plan for the coming year with full GP engagement, as well as advising on the redesign of pathology services. At Portsmouth Hospitals NHS Trust I produced savings of £9 in the 6 months I worked for them. My interest was always in the ways patient care could be better delivered with more efficient use of resources. I advised on implementation of Quality, Innovation, Productivity and Prevention Plans (QIPP), I worked with London councils to improve the treatment of chronic conditions across health and social care services, and at Mid-Staffordshire NHS Trust I helped to improve hospital mortality and ED targets. My experience has given me a peculiarly privileged insight into the pressures hospital staff work under, and I believe that, as a practising nurse, I shall have a very well informed attitude to my role and to what is possible to achieve for my patients.
Outside my working life I have various interests. I founded the Liberty Life running club in South Africa in the 1990s for disadvantaged runners who wanted to run the Comrades Marathon, raising corporate sponsorship. I keep abreast of developments in my field by attending conferences and maintaining my membership of various healthcare organisations. I am bilingual, with fluent English and Afrikaans, as well as some German – useful assets in an increasingly international world.
My greatest personal gift is my deep interest in people and their welfare, an essential quality in a good nurse. I am skilled in problem solving, as I believe my work record shows, and colleagues regard me as good at what I do. I am ambitious, hard-working and very much focused on my goals. At the same time I have a good sense of humour and an ability to remain calm under pressure (as was demonstrated recently when I had to be airlifted off a mountain after dislocating my shoulder!) My commitment to my ambition is total, and I believe I have the qualities necessary to become a very successful nurse.
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